This community sense of responsibility did not in the beginning have the wide constructive vision which characterizes it to-day.  It was designed first as a corrective of pathological social ills, especially relative to childhood and youth.  Congestion in the modern city, an incident and a result of specialization and expansion of American industrial and commercial life, caused living conditions inimical to the health and morals of all the people.  As usual the children suffered most.  Deprived of light, air, wholesome living quarters, play space, and the advantages of a real home, they fell easy victims to disease, sickness, death, and, what is worse, to the disease and death of ideals and morals.  Juvenile faults and crimes increased at an alarming rate.  The therapy of play was applied.  It was soon found, however, that the great mission of playgrounds was not as a therapeutic agent, but as a preventive and constructive force.  The movement took on large, positive, constructive aims, purposes, and ideals.  It expanded into the playground and recreation movement, with emphasis upon the latter, aiming to provide for and direct the leisure-time activities of all the people.  Play was restored as the right of every child, without which no wholesome physical, mental, and moral growth is possible.

As constructively related to other great social problems, the playground and recreation movement was found almost universally applicable.  Sexual immorality and the white-slave traffic are combated by recreation centers where young women obtain under normal conditions the highest ideals and satisfy the spirit of youth, which is the sign of life itself.

The scope of this larger movement is as follows:  It promotes the establishment of playgrounds within walking distance of every child; athletic and sport fields for older boys and girls and for men and women; boating and swimming centers and parks for the use of all; recreation and social centers in municipal recreation buildings and in school buildings, where all the people of a community, irrespective of race or creed, may find opportunity for the fullest possible recreation and social life; it promotes school and municipal camps, tramping-clubs, and other activities that cultivate the habit of outdoor life; physical education and athletics in the schools that reach every child, instead of a few as now; it stands for school playgrounds, in connection with every school; it seeks to provide facilities through which musical, literary, dramatic, and artistic talents of the people may find encouragement and expression, and for a constructive social supervision of all commercial amusements.